


Blood Drive Shorts - 2017

by Anonymous



Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: Accidental Adult Offspring Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crack, Episode Tag, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Humor, Knifeplay, Knives, Missing Scene, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Onions, Post-Canon, Slink Writes Fanfiction, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-01-05 06:49:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12185025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: An assortment of short pieces previously posted to fail-fandomanon to fill various writing prompts there.  Each chapter is self-contained.Recent Ficlets:6. Domi/Cliff, Prompt: "Necks" - Episode tag for Steel City Nightfall. Domi and Cliff indulge in their own personal brand of intimacy.7. Grace & Arthur, Prompt: "Fate" - Grace doesn't believe in fate, and she's happy to live her life without knowing what her tattooed-over soulmark says.8. Grace & Arthur & Slink, Prompt: "Characters Discovering They're Related" - Just when Grace and Arthur think that Slink doesn't have any surprises left to spring on them, they find themselves havingthisconversation.(Continued in:Blood Drive Shorts - 2018)





	1. Grace & Arthur, Prompt: "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gen, Grace & Arthur, Prompt: "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat" - Missing scene from early in the series. Arthur steals a document from Slink, but can he figure out what it means?

"Whatchya got there, Barbie?" Grace asked, eyeing the rumpled and stained sheaf of papers in Arthur's hands. "Something new to add to your notebook?"

"I snuck into Slink's trailer while he was onstage, hoping to find something that might say what the hell he's really up to with this race, because there has to be more to all this killing than just making a tv show," Arthur whispered after glancing around to make sure that they weren't standing too close to any car's cameras or anyone who might overhear. Once he felt secure in their safety from eavesdroppers, he scowled and said in a more normal voice, "Of course today would be the one day that he kept his post-race speech short. I had to grab the first thing that looked like his handwriting and run before he caught me."

"And?"

"And I don't know yet," Arthur said. "I've only had a chance to read the cover page so far, but it doesn't make any sense. I was about to see if the rest of it was just more of the same when you got here." He handed the papers to Grace.

"White Knight, Big Nightstick," Grace read aloud, "NC-17, M/M, Bailink, dub-con, omegaverse, Alpha!Copper, first rut, object insertion, edgeplay, discipline, size kink, knotting, cum inflation, prolapse."

"Like I said, it doesn't make any sense," Arthur complained, oblivious to Grace's eyes widening and her eyebrows climbing towards her hairline as she silently speed-read through the other pages. "What's the rest of it like?" Slink's handwriting was just a little too fancy for Arthur to read upside down while Grace kept shuffling everything around like that.

"It's pretty much, um, pretty much what the cover page implies it's going to be," Grace finally said as she reached the end of the document. She looked pained.

"So it's all in code then. That's fine." He held out his hand to take the papers back from Grace. "Codes can be broken, and when we do we can finally—WHAT THE HELL, GRACE?!?" Arthur shouted when, instead of returning the papers to him, Grace turned and threw them into the nearest flaming metal drum. "That might have been able to let us know exactly what Slink's thinking!"

"Oh, it totally did," Grace said. "But, Barbie? Trust me when I say that there are some things that you really don’t want to know. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get drunk enough to forget that I ever knew it either."


	2. Grace & Arthur & Slink, Prompt: "Onions"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gen, Grace & Arthur & Slink, Prompt: "Onions" - Missing scene from Episode 13, Finish Line. Slink doesn't like onions, and he's happy to share his list of reasons why.

Their meandering route around the shifting innards of Heart Tower took them through one of the cafeteria kitchens. Slink refused to share responsibility for placing the charges in just the right locations, so there wasn't much for Grace or Arthur to do besides follow and keep an eye out for anyone who might try to stop them. So far, the whole building seemed deserted. Then Arthur accidentally bumped into a precariously placed sack of onions and sent them scattering all over the floor. One bumped against Slink's boot, causing him to whip around and literally snarl down at the offending bulb as he hauled back and kicked it across the room to splatter on the far wall.

"Are these poisonous or something?" Grace said, because if the past few weeks had taught her anything, it was that just about any kind of stupidly deadly creation was possible where Heart Enterprises was concerned. She eyed the other onions still rolling around the floor, a couple of them heading her way, and a horrible thought occurred to her, causing her to add, "Or venomous?" She gripped the edge of the nearest counter in preparation for hoisting herself out of danger if it was necessary.

"Or maybe just bitey?" Arthur asked, looking like he was having the same thoughts as Grace.

Slink just scowled at the both of them like he thought they were making fun of him. "What, a man's not allowed to dislike onions just on principle? Fucking sue me," he grumbled and went back to planting his bombs at regular intervals, heading toward the far door.

Grace and Arthur exchanged another look and followed him without further comment, but they gave the rest of the fallen onions as wide a berth as possible as they passed them, just in case.

Once they were out into the next hallway, Grace couldn't hold her tongue anymore.

"You're fine with building cars that run on human blood," she said as they continued along their path to wherever it was that Slink was taking them next, "and with getting people to murder each other for the entertainment of others, but onions somehow offend you just by existing. Seriously, Slink?"

"Yes," he answered, "they do. Oh sure, they're a readily available minor irritant that can make people cry, but so what? That's weaksauce chemical weaponry at its most pathetic. There are better ways to blind someone, either temporarily or permanently, both in terms of ease of transport and level of control during application."

Slink mimed jabbing a pair of fingers at Arthur's face in demonstration, stopping far enough from connecting that Arthur was able to resist the urge to smack his hand out of the way and give him a closed fist to the face in return, but just barely.

"And don't get me started on their other so-called uses," Slink said as he zig-zagged down the hall, planting more bombs as he went. "The dyes made from them can't begin to compete with what you get from synthetics. They just make sad, drab colors that get drabber with every washing. Then there's onions' failure to bring any fun into the world, because even if they weren't already so far down on the list of substances that can be used for figging as to be not worth bothering with at all, their stupid little layers make it too much of a hassle to carve them into a good shape for it. They're basically useless. Also, they smell bad. Tell me one thing an onion is really, really good for."

"Most people just like to eat them," Arthur said.

Slink snorted derisively and pressed another bomb onto the wall. "And yet I'm the one who everyone calls the weirdo." With a tap of a finger and a wry laugh, he armed it like all the others. "This world doesn't even realize how much it needs me."


	3. Arthur & Christopher, Prompt: "Role Swap"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur & Christopher, Prompt: "Role Swap" - Scene from an AU version of Welcome to Pixie Swallow. What if Slink was the sexbot and Aki the Blood Drive MC?

"What are the odds? The one room with cell reception happens to be filled with files on the Blood Drive."

"I'd say great if you're being watched." Arthur tightened the cord around the crazy cannibal redneck's throat and hoped that the guy would pass out before the phone broke and cut him off from his partner.

"This place is weird as hell, man," Christopher said on the other end of the line, oblivious to both Arthur's struggles and his own suspiciously convenient situation. "Remember Officer Slink?"

"Yeah," Arthur said, surprised by the apparent non sequitur, "short guy, weird eyes and all that other shit, probably on the spectrum."

"Lot more than weird eyes," Christopher said. Before Arthur could ask where he was going with this, he continued, "Well, he works for Heart. He's a big deal here." He paused, then, "I think he's kind of into me." The shudder in Christopher's voice came through the wires loud and clear.

"You could do worse," Arthur said not even bothering to try to stop himself. It wasn't like Christopher didn't already know that Arthur was bi.

"Seriously?"

"Sure," Arthur said, "why not?" The redneck cannibal finally seemed to be good and unconscious, and Arthur began the awkward process of unwinding the phone cord from around his neck without taking the handset away from his ear. "I mean, if you can get him to trim his nails and stop putting shoe polish on his teeth, he'd be hot in a middle-aged sleazy-cute kind of a way."

"When all this is over, you and I are going to have a talk about your shitty taste in men. In the meantime, maybe I can work things from the inside, get some intel from him."

Later, after Christopher had given him what information he could about Karma D'Argento and Arthur had failed to talk him out of the terrible idea of staying at Heart Enterprises and they had said their goodbyes, Arthur looked around at the continuing cannibal carnage and wondered why Aki still hadn't shown up yet and whether there would be enough people left to compete in her death race once she finally did. However, all that was a secondary concern to staying alive right now, so Arthur turned and headed to the kitchen to find Grace and the Scholar.


	4. Grace & Slink & Karma, Prompts: "Sharp Edges" and "Disgruntled Shippers"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace & Slink & Karma, Prompts: "Sharp Edges" and "Disgruntled Shippers" - Post-canon fix-it. Grace doesn't care how they're all still alive. She just wants to get Arthur back, and Slink might be able to help her do it.

Grace wanted to say that they weren't in Kansas anymore, but she didn't because she knew it would only lead to either Karma or Slink telling her that it was New York that they weren't in anymore, because they both liked to be obnoxious like that. Also, this place looked suspiciously like her old hometown in Kansas.

"If you're wondering why we're not dead or bleeding to death right now," Slink said, "it's because—"

"I don't care about any of that right now, Slink," Grace interrupted, pulling out her backup knife and holding it to his neck. "What I care about is getting Arthur back from wherever that blood gate took him, and if you don't help me do that, then I'm going to start taking pieces off of you and not stop until you stay dead for real this time. So, are you going to help or not?"

"Shouldn't you be offering this choice to your sister here instead of me? She's the one who tried to kill you most recently." Slink tried to struggle out of Grace's grip, but, despite seeming less injured than when Grace had last seen him in the basement, he was weak and swaying on his feet too much to succeed. Grace herself wasn't feeling like she was back to one hundred percent full health either, but she had a lot of practice functioning through the aftereffects of severe blood loss.

"That's between me and Karma," Grace said. "Also, literally just a minute ago you brought down a building on our heads, so you're still in first place."

Slink gave her what had to be the world's fakest look of shocked innocence. "But I only brought down the building after giving you time to escape, Grace," he said. "Whose fault is it that you didn't?"

"Just answer the damn question. Do you help, or do Karma and I get in some sisterly bonding time by killing you together?" Grace increased the pressure of the blade against his neck just enough to split the first few layers of skin and bring beads of dark red blood sluggishly welling to the surface.

"I bet you can guess which option I'm rooting for," Karma told him cheerily.

Slink's eyes flicked back and forth between Grace and Karma. Grace could practically see him running the risk/reward assessment in his head as he categorized their potential weaknesses. She tensed in preparation for a fight, but his answer surprised her.

"Get me to a computer," he said after a long moment, "and I'll see what I can do."

"Aw, but I hate road trips," Karma complained. "Are you sure we can't just kill him here?"

"Once I have Arthur back, you and Slink can hash things out between yourselves and I won't try to stop either of you," Grace said, letting go, stepping back, and putting her knife away. "Until then, if he's being helpful, I want him alive."

"So kind of you, Grace," Slink said. He had to settle for inclining his head in her direction instead of tipping his still-missing hat to her. The drops of blood on his neck were already sinking out of sight as the shallow cut slid closed.

Grace noticed that the process seemed slower than it had been in Red River. She filed the fact away for later but knew that it wasn't the kind of information she should put too much faith in if push ever came to shove and they really did throw down again.

"Ugh, fine," Karma said. "Can I at least drive this time?"

"That depends," Grace answered. "While you were taking over your combination multinational company and murder cult, did you manage to squeeze getting your learner's permit into your busy schedule?"

Karma crossed her arms and scowled defiantly. "I had chauffeurs."

"Then, no, you can't drive," Grace said. She turned and started heading toward the flash of shiny bright red paint which could only be Sexy Suzy parked a few blocks down the street. To soften the blow, she turned around and, walking backwards, added, "You can ride shotgun, though."

Karma grinned and hurried after her, shouting, "Hear that, Julian? You're in back!"

"As if I'd be stupid enough to expect you to sit behind me without getting stabby," Slink called after her, following at a slower pace, still not exactly steady on his feet. Then again, Grace had noticed that he always tended to walk with his arms out a little bit, like he was balancing on a tightrope, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked.

"Just keep repeating that to yourself until you believe it’s true!"

Grace groaned. She could feel a headache coming on that had nothing to do with dehydration or her now vanished injuries. She had a sneaking suspicion that, even if they didn't need to go far, it was going to feel like a very long trip.

* * *

They wound up having to check three different towns and spend more hours in the car together than Grace cared to count, but by early afternoon they found a miraculously still functioning internet café. Karma and Slink settled in as far from each other as they could get, and Grace was left with nothing to do but eat a giant muffin (there were sandwiches available, but it was going to be a very long time before Grace trusted any meat where she hadn't gotten to see it attached to the whole, identifiable animal first), sip an overpriced cup of coffee, and wonder which of her two companions needed more supervision. Being an overprotective older sibling was a difficult habit to break, so she made another stop at the counter and then wandered over to check on Karma.

"You'd better not be downloading porn," Grace said.

"Ew, no, gross." Karma looked up from her screen long enough to accept the fresh cup of coffee and pastry that Grace passed to her. Then she went back to scrolling through page after page of text and graphs that may have been financial reports.

"Good," Grace said, "because, as your older sister, I wouldn't know whether to scold you or give you a high five if you were."

Karma rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she said. "I'm working." Karma took a sip from her cup and then dumped in two more sugar packets on top of the two Grace had already added. Whatever else about her had changed, her sweet tooth had not. "Shouldn't you be bothering Slink? He's the one supposedly trying to get your boy toy back for you, not me."

Karma was right enough that Grace chose not to argue with her and instead wandered over to the other side of the café where Slink had taken over two terminals at once and was swapping back and forth the two.

"You'd better not be downloading porn," Grace said, "because if you're doing that while you're supposed to be helping Arthur, then I'm going to have to kick your ass." She leaned in to read over his shoulder, and her eyes went wide. "Oh my god, you are! And is that story about me and Rib Bone ...and Clown Dick?" She grabbed a handful of his collar and hauled him half out of his chair. "What the fuck, Slink?"

"Now, now, my dear," Slink said, standing the rest of the way up to keep from being choked by his own clothing. "This isn't for titillation purposes, at least not mine. Have you forgotten that I'm a 'sexless monster' as you were previously so fond of calling me? I assure you that the pornography is nothing more than the fastest way to identify the BNFs necessary to influence the rest of the fanbase. This is crowd sourcing!"

"Now you're just making random shit up."

"Oh, no," he said, "not at all!" Then, grinning, he raised his voice enough for it to carry to everyone in the room, because Slink apparently couldn't resist the urge to play to a crowd (in this case, the barista and all three of the café's other customers, counting Karma) even when they were supposed to be lying low. "The Blood Drive may not have ever gone to broadcast, but I've been leaking the episodes online for years!"

"You did what?" Karma shouted from the other side of the room.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Slink said. "Did you not know that?" And Grace had been wrong earlier, because the look he was giving Karma right now was definitely the world's fakest look of shocked innocence, not the one he had used on her that morning. "The previous board all knew and tacitly approved. I guess you never got the memo. I suppose you also thought that all those merchandise sales were coming from in-house? Please!" Grace eyed Slink doubtfully but let go of his collar. He straightened his clothes and sat back down in his chair, though he was cautious enough to adjust the angle of his seat to better see if Karma decided to come after him with a knife or carafe of scalding hot coffee. He dropped his voice back to its previous lower volume and continued, "As I was saying, my show's fanbase is global and, in certain cases, very rabid. Arthur's disappearance sinks four of the current biggest fan favorite relationships."

"I'm not sure if I even want to know what you're talking about anymore," Grace sighed.

"Arthur and you, Arthur and me, Arthur and Christopher, and Arthur and the Scholar," Slink said gleefully. "The factions have been warring with each other online for weeks! Originally, cockblocking the lot of them would have been an amusing byproduct of killing off Arthur, but now we can use their matchmaking blueballs to our advantage to get him back. Hell hath no fury like disgruntled shippers scorned, especially not a whole lot of them united against the common foe of cancellation. I just need to send word to the right sets of eyes, who'll in turn let everyone else know that they should mobilize. Then we set up a crowd funding site, and the support will come pouring in." He clapped his hands together. "We'll have the resources we need to get to Blood Rock Island in no time! Hell, if some of the richer, crazier fans get on board, we might not even need to go there ourselves. They'll do it for us, then bring him back here to throw at you, or maybe me, and shout, 'now kiss.' Nutjob fans are the best, especially when I'm recruiting more members for the Mayhem Parties," Slink giggled. Then his gaze grew distant as he tapped his chin in thought. "Come to think of it," he mused, "our next stop from here should be to buy some new cameras. I'm going to want to film this, and the ones in your car won't be enough."

With a mutter of, "Fuck my life. We're coming for you, Barbie, one way or another," Grace chugged the rest of her coffee because she knew they were probably about to get kicked out, then she went to fill Karma in on the rest of the so-called plan.


	5. Slink, Prompt: "Teeth"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slink, Prompt: "Teeth" - Pre-canon, a newly created Julian Slink fine-tunes the look he plans to present to the world.

The mirror didn't lie, he was fucking fabulous.

It was a joy to finally be allowed to wear something other than hospital gowns, and the nameless underlings assigned to the task had done a good job of finding clothing that met his demands, even the top hat. However, though Julian Slink may have been born knowing the kind of look he wanted for himself, there was still room to experiment and fine tune things for greatest results. The makeup had been a good start, shaping the rather ordinary curves of his face into the illusion of something more dramatic. But, as he scrutinized his reflection, he couldn't help feeling that something was still missing.

He bared his teeth at himself and decided that those were definitely part of the problem. Right now they were too perfect, too ordinary, too boringly wholesome looking. He would have to do something about that. He supposed he could file them into points, but, no, that would come across as too tryhard. Removing a few might have the desired visual effect, but then he would have to worry about accidentally whistling through the gaps when he talked, and that would ruin everything.

No, he needed something that could render the form disconcerting without impairing the function. A change of color might do the trick, but it needed to be something really blatant. Yellow would be too likely to be assumed to be accidental, and the same went for most shades of orange or brown. Perhaps they'd look good in bloody red, like he had just bitten someone? It was an amusing idea to keep it in mind for special occasions but not quite right for his everyday look. Although, while he was thinking of blood red, he realized that the color would be a good way to highlight his mouth, just a touch of it at the center, vaguely reminiscent of a split lip. He applied a quick smear to test it out, and, oh, yes, that was an amazing improvement.

Back to the problem of his teeth, though. He quickly dismissed the idea of blue, green or purple, because any of those would just look silly, but he felt like he was on the right track now. The color needed to be dark, and if he was going to go for dark then he might as well go all the way to black. Black teeth would stand out shockingly in some lighting, while in other lighting they'd be barely visible save for glinting wet highlights against a dark void. Slink grinned at the mental image. Yes, black would be perfect.


	6. Domi/Cliff, Prompt: "Necks"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Domi/Cliff, Prompt: "Necks" - Episode tag for Steel City Nightfall. Domi and Cliff indulge in their own personal brand of intimacy.

Cliff's little surprise gift of the finger had been exactly what Domi needed to get over the last of her annoyance at Slink for interrupting their previous moment and ruining the mood. They had even had a little fun dancing together after that and then had stumbled back to their tent, giggling like teenagers. But it had been a long day, and though the spirit was willing the flesh was exhausted, so their wants and intentions of picking up where they had left off before were soon abandoned in favor of the simpler and more immediate need for sleep.

Domi awoke some hours later to the familiar sensation of Cliff spooning her from behind, one of his arms under her head like a pillow while he used his free hand to gently stroke a knife across her neck. The spooning was the only way they could both fit together in the too small camp cot without either of them falling out in the night, and the knife, well, that was just Cliff's way of passing the time when he couldn't stay asleep but didn't feel like getting out of bed. Sometimes Domi did the same to him, ghosting a razor sharp edge above the hills and valleys of his flesh, his tendons, his veins, his Adam's apple, as she fantasized about the sound it would make, the sound Cliff would make, if any sudden movement, either hers or Cliff's, caused the blade to go sliding through all those delicate structures necessary for keeping a person's head attached to their shoulders.

It was late enough that the nightly noise of the Mayhem Party had died down to a few distant mutters, so Cliff must have been able to notice the change in her breathing and know that she was awake. He didn't say anything, though, so Domi smiled into the darkness and pretended she was still asleep, letting herself relax even further and enjoy the narrowing of focus which let her feel as if there was nothing left of the world but her, her husband, and his knife at her neck. He had been at it long enough for the blade to have warmed to near body temperature now. He stroked the blade up and down, slowly, barely touching the skin, sometimes lingering against especially vulnerable points for a delicious while before moving on again.

He could have been teasing her, or he could have been lost in his own fantasies of what it would be like to replace this display of dexterity with brute force; Domi had no way of knowing which it was without asking, and she was not yet ready to break the illusion by doing something like that. Instead, Domi exhaled a deep sigh and shifted her position against Cliff as if settling deeper into sleep. He perfectly matched her movements with his knife, never breaking contact nor pressing too hard. Newly arranged, Domi was free to slowly, oh so very slowly, slide one hand down between her legs, slip two fingers inside herself, and begin some gentle stroking of her own. Through it all, Cliff continued his careful exploration of the contours of Domi's neck with his knife, and as Domi brought herself closer to climax, she dreamed of some unknown future day and a very different sort of climax, one where somebody's knife, his or hers, it barely mattered which, would stop teasing and instead dig all the way down.


	7. Grace & Arthur, Prompt: "Fate"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace & Arthur, Prompt: "Fate" - Grace doesn't believe in fate, and she's happy to live her life without knowing what her tattooed-over soulmark says.

Grace D'Argento didn't believe in fate.

Her father gave her a lot of reasons to hate him before he died, but she had always been grateful that he and her mother had decided to have her soulmark covered over with a tattoo right after she was born despite that kind of thing not really starting to become socially acceptable until sometime in the mid-to-late eighties. Growing up, the people she knew were always horrified the first time they saw the black bar curving diagonally across the left side of her lower back. They always asked if she planned to have it burned off to reveal her words as soon as she was old enough to do so without her parents' consent, but she never understood why she would possibly want to do that.

Grace liked the freedom that came with not knowing whatever phrase was hidden under that ink on her back. She could go out and live her life without needing to pay careful attention to every stranger in case they might be the one to inadvertently blurt out the secret combination announcing she'd probably be stuck with them for the rest of her life. She could have a good time with whoever she wanted and didn't need to pass over anyone pretty, or funny, or intriguingly dangerous just because their first words didn't match the ones which some unknown force had stamped down near her ass before she was born, and when she was done having a good time she could move on to someone new.

Of course she didn't get the ink burned off when she turned eighteen. Instead, she went out and did the exact opposite, getting a fresh layer applied over top of the old fading one to ensure it remained unreadable and adding more to the design to make it look like more than just a cover-up job, to really make it her own. It was almost funny to think about how so many people considered covering a soulmark to be the worst possible sin as opposed to so many of the other things Grace had done to ensure that she could keep living life on her own terms and keep Karma safe in the process.

The years went by, and nothing ever happened to change Grace's opinion about needing or wanting a soulmate. Then a self-righteous male Barbie doll of a cop literally fell into Grace's life, further complicating her already risky plan to get the money for Karma's treatment by winning a death race. Then things got even more complicated just a few hours later when Sexy Suzy's radiator blew and Grace demanded Arthur's shirt to help try to patch the leak. There, scrawled right over Arthur's heart, (because where else would an uptight goody-goody like him have his soulmark?) were the words, "Hey, asshole, you dented my car!" Well, that explained why he seemed even more freaked out by Grace than he did by the bomb in his head or the cars that ran on blood.

Ironically, Grace still didn't know what her own soulmark said, because she had been too angry to pay much attention to the words coming out of Arthur's mouth at the time. All she could remember was that he'd called her, "Ma'am," which only served to make her happier that she was wearing that ink over her mark, because she had always hated being called, "Ma'am."

Fuck fate, and also fuck whatever its plans were for her and Arthur. Even if they both somehow survived to the end of the race, it was going to take a lot more than a fancy birthmark to make Grace D'Argento agree to spend the rest of her life with anyone, and Barbie seemed like the least likely of all possible candidates for the job. Judging by his behavior so far, this was the one thing that they managed to agree on, and Grace couldn't imagine either of their opinions on that matter changing anytime soon.

No, seriously, fuck fate right in its incorporeal ass.


	8. Grace & Arthur & Slink, Prompt: "Characters Discovering They're Related"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace & Arthur & Slink, Prompt: "Characters Discovering They're Related" - Just when Grace and Arthur think that Slink doesn't have any surprises left to spring on them, they find themselves having _this_ conversation.

"What the fuck?" Arthur repeats for at least the tenth time in a row.

Obviously recognizing a lost cause when he sees one, Slink ignores him and instead turns to focus wholly on Grace, giving her a smug smile and an unconcerned shrug, saying, "It's not my fault this is such a surprise to you right now. I tried to tell you back in Red River, but you weren't interested in listening."

Grace wants to tell him that he tried to tell her nothing of the sort, but the words, "You don't know who I really am," said over a bottle of whiskey at a scarred wooden table in a weird-ass espresso bar, rise unbidden in her memory. She still stands by her original assessment from back then, even if she and Arthur really are the source of the dirty jizz and broken egg that somehow got scrambled together with Julian Slink as the result.

"What the fuck?" Arthur says yet again. It doesn't even sound like it's a response to Slink's words anymore, more like just a reflex, and Grace doesn't blame him in the slightest, because she has pretty much the exact same thing playing on a loop in her mind too. However, if Arthur is stuck in broken record mode (or maybe just plain broken, if the look of glassy-eyed panic frozen on his face is anything to go by), then Grace needs to be the one to get enough answers for the both of them.

"How the fuck is that even possible when I met you a year before I met Arthur?" Grace says. She wants to grab Slink by the lapels and shake him until answers fall out. Maybe if she shakes him hard enough, then she won't have to pay attention to all the bits of herself and Arthur layered over top of each other in his facial features that, having noticed them once, she'll never be able to unsee. Maybe if she kills him, he'll actually stay dead this time and she and Arthur can pretend that this conversation never happened. "Besides," she adds, mostly just to drown out the voice in her head that sounds like Karma telling her this was just more proof that Grace always had been and always would be a shitty parental figure, "you said Heart built you in a lab or whatever."

"Yes, but I also told you that Heart are cheap bastards. You don't really think that they'd bother spend the time and money necessary to design a person from scratch when they could just make upgrades to preexisting DNA, do you?"

Grace and Slink both ignore Arthur as he mutters another, "What the fuck?"

"That just brings me back to my original question," Grace says.

"You remember your leashes?" Slink reaches up and taps the back of his neck with a couple of fingers to illustrate his point, as if Grace could ever manage to forget the brain bomb she had to carry around next to her spine for a week and a half. "The applicator takes a DNA sample every time it implants a charge, for record keeping purposes. Well, mostly it's for 'officially identifying the body after the head's been blown off and the rest has been burnt to a crisp in a fiery car crash' purposes, but you get the idea. Anyway, once the samples are collected from the racers, they're sent back to headquarters for storage. You've been there, Grace, so you should know what I'm talking about when I say that, long story short—"

"Too late."

"What the fuck?"

"Long story short," Slink plows on, not deigning to respond to either comment, "the intern tasked with delivering this year's batch to the cryo facilities took a shortcut down the wrong hallway and ended up in 1988, where somebody working on my project went, 'Hey, free DNA, just what we need right now!' They sequenced the samples, decided that you two were the best of the bunch, and the rest is history. And me," he adds, making a little 'ta-da' motion and gesturing to himself. "Any questions?"

"What the fuck?"

"God damn it, Arthur," Grace sighs, "can you just snap out of it already? I want to forget about all of this as soon as possible, not have to repeat it all back to you once you're in a fit state to listen again. Dudes find out they have adult children they didn't know about all the time. It's not generally something that happens to women, though, so if anything I'm the one who should be freaking out, not you. So knock it off!" She tries waving a hand in front of his face, but it's to no avail.

"Here," Slink says. "Allow me." He steps forward and flicks Arthur across the nose with one finger.

Arthur's eyes finally snap back into focus on the here and now, but only after he has already reflexively punched Slink in the face.

"There's the Arthur Bailey we all know and love," Slink says, grinning as he picks first himself and then his hat off the floor. Once he's up, he leans in close to Arthur again, as if Arthur's face is the one that needs to be inspected for damage instead of his own. "Back with us to stay now?"

Arthur pushes Slink away with one hand and asks Grace, "I don't suppose it's possible that I just imagined the last ten minutes, is it?"

Grace shakes her head in sympathy. "Sorry, Barbie, but no. But if we both agree to never mention it again, then we can pretend."

"It wouldn't change the truth though," Arthur says with a sigh. "And here I thought the worst thing that could happen when we had a kid would be you wanting to name him after Rib Bone and then shove him down the garbage disposal."

Grace isn't sure what she had been expecting Arthur to say, but it sure wasn't that. However, at this point after everything that has just been sprung on her, Grace decides that the best mental defense is to change the subject before Arthur can go into detail about when or why exactly he would have been thinking about something like that before Slink decided to rock their world for the fun of it.

"I don't even want to know," she says, and Arthur just nods in reply, looking like he already regrets opening his mouth and would be more than happy to let the subject drop. Although, now that she's thinking about things that it would be better to leave unmentioned, there was one point she couldn't bear to leave well enough alone. She turns back to Slink, who been suspiciously quiet lately, as if waiting for this exact moment. "So, when you compared yourself to Oedipus Rex…," she begins.

"Don't flatter yourself, Grace," Slink says without waiting for her to finish, because, yeah, he has obviously been waiting for this moment. "I was talking about the building. When it comes to the two of you," he points back and forth between Arthur and Grace, "I'm way more of an Electra than an Oedipus."

He says it like he expects the information to be some kind of dramatic reveal that's even bigger and more earth-shaking than everything that came before, but really it's the absolute least surprising thing Grace has heard in a really long time.

Even Arthur just gives a resigned sigh and says, "Yeah, that sounds right."

**Author's Note:**

> (Continued in: [Blood Drive Shorts - 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13805457/chapters/31741941))


End file.
